Sterile
by Kanna37
Summary: His life is just as it should be - perfect. Then why does he hate it with so much passion?
1. Chapter 1

**Sterile**

I do not own the characters of Inuyasha.

~oOo~

Sesshoumaru stared blindly out of his windows, the glass of sake forgotten in his hand as he lost himself in his thoughts. Everything was perfect, was just as it should be... and yet it was all wrong.

He hated everything about his life - so-called 'perfection' included.

This feeling of dissatisfaction had been growing inside him for over five hundred years. Always before he had fought such useless emotions away and hidden them at the back of his mind. He was a daiyoukai, a lord amongst youkai and men, and his life should be perfect. And yet... those feelings had boiled and festered in his soul, spoiling everything, and nothing he could do would make them disappear.

His fingers tightened around the delicate glass he held in his hand as the incident that had first caused these unseemly emotions within him once more played out in detail within his mind, and a snarl of frustrated rage curled his lip.

His wretched brother had never realized just how often he had spied upon the boy's group, really in an attempt to find some way to destroy him. Inuyasha's human companions had not mattered to him much at all, and that was as it should have been.

Until, that was, one specific event had torn his previously unwavering attention from his nemesis and forced it firmly onto someone else...

The young miko that had been his brother's constant companion for so many months.

That event was the battle with the so-called 'flower prince' Kaou.

He had never seen a female stand with such strength of spirit and determination – _grace and even beauty – _as that little _human _woman had in that moment. He had never forgotten the youkai's words, the excitement in his voice when he'd announced the fact that the miko's soul contained more agony and pain than even his brother's – and in that moment he'd looked at the girl with narrowed eyes, expecting her to be a blubbering mess while she allowed the fool to give her pain a name. He'd thought that she would take the opportunity to make his brother understand the pain he'd induced within her in an attempt to passively manipulate him through the inevitable guilt he'd feel for being the cause of her anguish – and he'd waited with scathing superiority for those exact actions to once more prove his words about the inferiority of humans and their lack of honor towards anyone but themselves.

He'd been stunned into immobility when she had stopped the youkai's words before he could reveal the source of her anguish and then stood with such strength and pride and faced the weak fool down with pain in her eyes, fire in her heart, and the grace of the gods themselves, and told him that no matter the source of her pain there was nothing there for him to devour.

And then she'd drawn back an arrow, and attacked...

His world had crumpled at his feet in that one instant of time and in all the years since he had never been able to repair it.

He was half-drawn from his thoughts by glass shattering in his hand and the smell of spilled rice wine; with a growl he threw the shattered cup against a wall, watching with almost out-of-control anger as it was pulverized halfway to dust by the force of the impact.

For all his arrogant certainty that youkai were the ultimate work of creation and that humans were weak, worthless creatures with no dignity, he had been unable to find one youkai female that carried a more graceful spirit than that definitely _human_ miko. Not once in five hundred years. And for just as many of those years he had hated her for that simple fact. Because he, Sesshoumaru, would not take an inferior female as his, and only one who was like her but not human would do. He wouldn't accept less than his due, and a woman with such strength – and youkai blood - was definitely his due.

But it had been five hundred years and no youkai had measured up, leaving him doomed to be ever alone... because she was only a human. Which meant that she was long since dead.

As he stood there staring out the window he hated mortality with ever-deepening enmity, death with more despite than he'd ever had towards his brother, and the fates with a sick malice that bordered on insanity. If he could have gotten his hands on them he would have destroyed them for what they had done to him.

His life was perfect...

And perfectly sterile. He was more dead than any corpse... and just as isolated and alone.

For the first time in his life he wished he'd never been born.


	2. Alive

**Alive**

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Inuyasha.

~s~

Cold golden eyes stared at the steps leading up to the shrine that had once been set above a small village. That small village had grown and become just another part of the great, living city of Tokyo, but to the empty daiyoukai that statement – one he commonly heard - was nothing more than human hubris.

This city was just as dead as he was, and it seemed as if the entire world would be soon, too.

Pressing forward with his youki, Sesshoumaru tested the shrine for any barriers or purifying magic that might have been left behind by miko or monk, and was surprised to find that while the shrine itself wasn't shielded, there _was_ a true miko living on its grounds. He could feel her power from here, and he frowned, suddenly feeling something he hadn't felt in years – curiosity. This was the first real miko he'd sensed in almost two hundred years.

Flowing easily up the steps in a manner that would make most people jealous, the daiyoukai ascended as quickly as possible without giving away the truth of what he was. He was feeling something for the first time in centuries, and he was enjoying the sensation of feeling like he was alive again, even if it was only for the moment.

When he reached the top he stopped and looked around, wanting to know what this place, one that had once been so wild and free, now looked like. Surrounded by the death and destruction that humans carried with them wherever they went and that covered them almost like a miasma, this one place was like an oasis, instead. _Perhaps I should look into buying this shrine so that I can be assured that it never gets swallowed by more endless fields of humans._

_This was where __she__ lived, after all... once upon an era. Perhaps the miko here now is a descendent._

The thought brought a hot tide of crimson jealousy.

_She probably married that hanyou. _

Sesshoumaru hadn't seen the halfling since the battle with Naraku. While his hatred had softened during the events of the search for the dark hanyou, he would never have been able to be around the boy on any kind of closer basis – they simply had nothing in common and too much bad history between them to ever be true family.

The shrine compound was neat, a quiet serenity permeating it that Sesshoumaru hadn't felt in centuries. It was the same effect that the miko's aura had once had on everything around her, and he became more convinced that whoever the girl was that carried such power now, she had to be related to the other one in some way.

His eyes eventually fell on the Goshinboku and he started towards it, feeling a surprising sense of nostalgia as he looked upon something he'd known all those centuries ago, even if only in passing. Almost everything that had connected him to that time had vanished into the intervening years and the human need to conquer and subdue everything around them – even nature.

The tree still carried the scar of his brother's sealing, and the disguised daiyoukai decided not to deny the impulse to touch the great tree. His eyes fell closed as his palm pressed to the great tree and the awareness within it touched back against him, recognizing something else that didn't belong to the world of men.

After a few moments he drew away and looked over in the direction of that odd well that his brother had been so protective of, wondering if it had survived the centuries, too. In the general vicinity of where it had stood from what his memories were telling him there was a small wooden building with unlocked shoji, and he was pretty certain that the well was inside that little shrine. Or what was left of it, anyway – there probably wasn't much, come to think of it. It _had _been a simple wooden structure facing down five hundred years, after all, and even the most impermeable beings suffered cracks in that amount of time.

Just like him.

"Can I help you?"

His thoughts were interrupted by a light voice with just a touch of suspicion in it, and he frowned – he was letting his past cloud his mind with the desire for things that he could never have. _Face reality, damn you... the miko is long dead. Projecting her voice onto someone else will not change that._

Gathering his control he turned around to look at the owner of the voice...

And in that moment all his previous suppositions, everything he'd thought he'd known about the world around him and how it worked faded into dust and left him reeling as the ground disappeared from beneath his feet and he felt like he was drowning in time.

Because it was the same miko from five hundred years before, not a descendent – it was _her. _And even though he was being consumed by things he hadn't felt in so long that he couldn't remember when he had last felt them, the most damning and wonderful thing that welled up within him in that moment was _hope_.

It was clear from the look on the girl's face that she knew who he was. There was a sense of wonder there, a touch of fear, and the sudden breathless feel of meeting someone who knew who you really were – knew what lay behind the facade that everyone else saw.

"Kagome," he said, letting that name past his lips for the first time since he'd killed Magatsuhi and broken the dark spirit of the jewel's seal on her power.

"Sesshoumaru," she breathed in return, something in her voice welcoming despite her wary shock.

As his true name echoed once more where the ears of the living could hear it he felt his heart beating again, his blood flowing, and life returning the warmth to his body. It had been so long that it actually hurt... but it was a good hurt, a welcome hurt. As he stepped towards her he was already planning every step of the coming campaign, the war he would wage to gain her for himself.

"How are you still alive?"

She watched him approach her without even trying to move away, and when he was standing right before her in all his glory she said, "I moved through time. I'm immune to it, you see. I don't know why," simply and with no guile whatsoever.

"Immune to time?" he murmured, looking her over. She didn't look much different from the way she had then, just a little taller, more filled out, and more mature. She had been stunning back then, as he'd learned from watching her face Kaou, but now she was so much more...

And she was immune to time, which meant that she would be able to walk beside him through forever without fading away like all other humans did. He wouldn't have to be alone any longer.

His life would no longer be sterile.

~s~

A/N: A lot of people wanted me to make something more out of my one shot Sterile – and so here we are. I hadn't planned this, it just came out, so enjoy everyone. There will be another one or two parts to this to finish it out, but they'll be just as short as this, so don't get all excited, people – I'm too busy with Trading Yesterday and my own original fic that I'm not going to start yet another long chapter fic anytime soon.

Amber


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